Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday July 25, 2014 @09:57AM
from the i-blame-the-schools dept.

mspohr writes: A special issue of Science magazine devoted to 'Vanishing Fauna' publishes a series of articles about the man-caused extinction of species and the implications for ecosystems and the climate. Quoting: "During the Pleistocene epoch, only tens of thousands of years ago, our planet supported large, spectacular animals. Mammoths, terror birds, giant tortoises, and saber-toothed cats, as well as many less familiar species such as giant ground sloths (some of which reached 7 meters in height) and glyptodonts (which resembled car-sized armadillos), roamed freely. Since then, however, the number and diversity of animal species on Earth have consistently and steadily declined. Today we are left with a relatively depauperate fauna, and we continue to lose animal species to extinction rapidly. Although some debate persists, most of the evidence suggests that humans were responsible for extinction of this Pleistocene fauna, and we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors." Unfortunately, most of the detail is behind a paywall, but the summary should be enough to get the point across.

Welcome, brother, grab a cowl and toss your razor in the bin on your right. Is it state the obvious Friday already, or is this just another opportunity for an argument about human impact on the climate?

Very true. A few years ago I was tutoring at a community college and actually met a man who didn't realize the Earth went around the sun. At first I assumed he was pulling my leg, how could an American in this day an age not know that?!? But he was fascinated by the idea, and we had a long conversation about the basics of orbital mechanics and how they shape tides, the seasons, etc.

Global warming, Young Earth, WMDs, chemtrails, anal probes... the list goes on and on. Granted, some of that is MISinformation, rather than lack of information, but I count misinformed as uninformed.

OP:

... we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.

Well, I grant the "threats or competitors" part, to some degree. But the U.S. now has MORE forests and other wildlife habitat than it had 100 years ago. In my general area, wolves and peregrine falcons have been reintroduced, quite successfully (th

Welcome, brother, grab a cowl and toss your razor in the bin on your right. Is it state the obvious Friday already, or is this just another opportunity for an argument about human impact on the climate?

Nobody is citing climate change and all the animals they cite in TFS were extinct well before humanity is supposed to have had an impact on the planet's climate. So I guess it's the former if your two choices are the only ones I've got.

But then again, I had no idea we were supposedly responsible for the extinction of mammoth.

Nobody is citing climate change and all the animals they cite in TFS were extinct well before humanity is supposed to have had an impact on the planet's climate.

How about TFA?

Since 1500, more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates have become extinct. Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance. The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life.

Across vertebrates, 16 to 33 percent of all species are estimated to be globally threatened or endangered. Large animals – described as megafauna and including elephants, rhinoceroses, polar bears and countless other species worldwide – face the highest rate of decline, a trend that matches previous extinction events.

The scientists also detailed a troubling trend in invertebrate defaunation. Human population has doubled in the past 35 years; in the same period, the number of invertebrate animals – such as beetles, butterflies, spiders and worms – has decreased by 45 percent.

As with larger animals, the loss is driven primarily by loss of habitat and global climate disruption, and could have trickle-up effects in our everyday lives.

Erm, 320 extinct? Over 500 years? Did you miss a few zeros? I guess I can memorize about 1 hundred if I'm sober and focus.However a quick googeling did not bring up something conclusive, perhaps no one really cared to count?

The mammoth are extinct for more than 3.5 THOUSAND years. I seriously doubt there were any mammoth alive in the early 1800s. You're off by approximately one Jesus Christ as they went extinct in 1700 BEFORE JC.

World's gonna end whether I pay or not, right? Then fuck it, I'm going to do the smart thing and give my money to that Asian guy who comes on my TV at about 2 AM every morning, and tells me that if I give him my money, he'll teach me to get as rich as he is.

World's gonna end whether I pay or not, right? Then fuck it, I'm going to do the smart thing and give my money to that Asian guy who comes on my TV at about 2 AM every morning, and tells me that if I give him my money, he'll teach me to get as rich as he is.

I think he already did. People just aren't paying attention.

But that method is so passe... Now it's "your miserable existence is ruining the earth. Give me your money so I can fix it." Now that I write that, I realize that it's a very similar mechanism to that used by the megachurches.

They were delicious. And we were hungry. God did give them tooth and claw. Despite it they did not defend themselves. May be they wanted to be eaten.

You may not agree with this statement. But shockingly there is a strain of political thought in America that applies exactly this principle to the human society and the poor people. And ironically those who profess these "maker vs taker" are shocked when they are told they are practicing social Darwinism.

It's all the ones that are useless to serve or be eaten by humans that are going extinct.

The problem is, most animal species are useful in the same way as nails in a wall are useful: sure, you can remove one or two without any apparent ill effect, but keep taking them off and the roof will fall on your head.

Ecosystem is a machine, and while it can adjust to a part going missing or operational parameters changing that capacity has limits. Kill enough species or warm the world enough and you trigger a domino effect. It won't be the end of the world, but it will be the end of our world.

But of course the temptation to take just one more is too much. It just goes to show that human brains and mindset aren't actually fit to handle our current level of power. I wonder if this is the Great FIlter [wikipedia.org].

Personally, I take a very darwinian approach to my lawn. That is, so long as it grows, and can put up with the lawn mower, it can stay. I don't water. I don't spread chemicals. The result is that I have all kinds of fauna in my yard, some of which I am not sure are even native to this solar system.

I like having a major chunk of the lawn be a garden. A co-worker has turned his front yard into one that is extremely productive, with a couple solar panels, a timer, and some PVC pipe for aeroponics (which actually is pretty water thrifty.)

The ironic thing is that a lot of HOAs detest gardens... but when the food gets ripe, people there usually are the first who want the 100% organically grown items.

Since people pay for that front yard space, might as well make it productive. If not a garden, then maybe

There are earthworm species that are native to North America (see, for instance, Hendrix's Earthworm Ecology and Biogeography in North America [google.com]). There are also exotic / invasive species. These species (as well as one or two native species with expanding ranges) are definitely a problem, but that is a different statement from "earthworms are not native to America."

There are earthworm species that are native to North America (see, for instance, Hendrix's Earthworm Ecology and Biogeography in North America [google.com]). There are also exotic / invasive species. These species (as well as one or two native species with expanding ranges) are definitely a problem, but that is a different statement from "earthworms are not native to America."

I don't know about earthworms, but I did hear years ago that the native species of lady bug in North America had been entirely supplanted by an Asian variety, and there were no native Lady Bug species left.

Old news. Frankly, the extinction has been going on since the beginning of the Holocene. Hallam said it best: there has never been a time when humanity has successfully and peacefully coexisted with nature.

Nature is not something that peacefully coexists with things to begin with. The only reason why it can appear that species are coexisting is that they are at an equillibrium left behind from driving the other 99.99..% of species extinct. To pick out humanity as a "problem" takes remarkable hubris.We might wipe out 99% of current species including ourselves, but as far as the earth or nature is concerned, or grander, the universe, it doesn't make one shitpile of difference.

I guess to boil it down to a shorter point, it is this:Any other apex predator species given the same capability and opportunity would do the same as we did. We know this, because they do (that's why we have problems with invasive species).

For us to single ourselves out as 'special' or 'remarkable' is flawed. Possibly, so is the idea that this is even a bad thing. I mean, one of the tenants of punctuated equilibrium is that species evolve fastest when under high pressure and presented with new opportunities

we are the cause of most species going extinct in the modern era.natural extinction is longer drawn out process. even the extinction of the dinosaurs took a few thousand years.and in that process they are frequently replaced, or the beginings of a replacement, by a new critter on the rise, or other critters filling in, or whatever equilibrium ends up being reached.

but therein lies the problem. not only are WE the cause, we are doing it far faster than nature can cope and adapt.

You fucking idiot, we *live* *in* this environment. By fucking it up, we fuck up our own chances at survival.

If we can't leave parts of the planet to themselves, what makes you think we'll leave each other around either?

Our time is limited. If we want to raise species diversity for... whatever reason,

How about just keep what is there? (At no point has diversity *inreased*!) And it's not for "whatever reason". It's for practical reasons. We are 100% dependent on the diversity of things. Kill the diversity of the bacteria in your gut, and I'll take bets how long you'll live. Do it on globa

Beyond that, any notion that we should be ashamed of how we have treated other species, destroyed habitats and whatever seems asinine.

Agent Smith:
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
There is another organism on this planet that

The Americas were pretty ecologically lush when the Europeans first arrived, despite being pretty thoroughly settled for 5-10,000 years at that point. In fact the population was so dense that the journals of early European explorers report that the smoke from their cook fires was visible for a week before the land itself came into view. Now, a scarce 500 years later, the vast hardwood forests have been exterminated and the great plains have expanded from the Mississippi all the way to the Appalachians and

Or perhaps the entire idea of 'peacefully coexisting with nature' is completely, utterly wrong and a romantic, emotionalized intellectualism first dreamed up by Thoreau and lately enfranchised by Greens because it thrums sympathetic heartstrings of the same naive urbanites that think you can hand-feed wild animals or coexist with bears (Grizzlyman!) because they're cute?

NO species "peacefully coexists with nature". Zero. Nature is a cold-hearted bitch, and to "win" against it, species have evolved their o

How should any species on this world be able to reproduce and grow fast enough to 'adapt' to the human onslaught?A human needs roughly 14 years from birth to fertility.We have something like 7 billion people on the planet.Some whale populations are down to a thousand. They need 7 years or more, too, to reach fertility.Even with the most crude and primitive boats and weapons it would be a matter of a few years to extinct EVERY species of whale on this world.And you blame them for not multiplying fast enough!

Environmentalism is too close to a religion for many. As such, any environmental issue also becomes a religious argument with all the pitfalls that entails. Try telling some people that "nature" is not some benevolent entity that cares about ecological diversity, balance, and harmony, and they'll look like you like a Southern Baptist might if you had just spit on baby Jesus (nothing against Southern Baptists... for some reason I just imagine they'd react with a bit more horror than us Northern Presbyteria

A man goes to a doctor. The doctor says "You need to stop smoking." Man says "SNORE! Old news, you told me that last time, tell me something I don't know!" and lights up. The man dies shortly thereafter *.

It is news because it is still happening and most people don't know it, or like to pretend we're not in for rough times. If a story is a duplicate on slashdot, then that's one thing. If it's so obvious that everyone already knows it, then that's also fair to object.

Hallam said it best: there has never been a time when humanity has successfully and peacefully coexisted with nature.

That would be a nice quote, but it contains an implicit assumption which is seriously wrong: That there is any distinction between humanity and nature.

It's not surprising that we tend to see ourselves as distinct from the rest of nature, because we are dramatically different from all other forms of life around us, and not just because we're self-centered, or even because we're objectively hugely more successful than any other species. We're dramatically different because we're the only species we know of

Without RTFA, have they surveyed our dumps and sewers? I'm sure there are a huge number of new species that are arising out of our garbage just waiting to take over. I just hope they don't have a hanker'n for BBQ humans.

Doesn't that mean we are winning the race for species domination just as every other species on Earth attempts and has attempted to do until resources cause the decline?

The reality is Earth's clock is ticking. All resources need to be exhausted to find a way off of this rock or sustain life in the harsher confines of deep space. Otherwise, what are we really doing with our advantage over all the other species past and present? You want a long term goal for humanity? There it is. Survival of the species beyo

I agree. But to be honest Darwin's theory of evolution pretty much proves that biggest jerk wins. Society is seems to be humans way of saying that we are going to choose what fittest means. AKA it is the anti jerk force.

Past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Nature also took quite good care of the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger, etc.

We are part of an ecosystem. I guess we're going to find out how much of that system we can destroy until we ourselves go extinct, or figure out a way to exist outside of the food web. Remember, just because you don't care about some little tree frog somewhere doesn't mean that the symbiotic and inter-connected nature of the system doesn't care

But what IS the point they're making? "Don't build anything, ever, and don't eat any animals, ever" ?

Stop fragmenting wildlife habitat?Crack down on superstitious morons who think that tiger bones will do more to cure their insomnia than over the counter sleeping pills?Don't buy a 500 hp pickup for one person to drive to work when you can use mass transit?Stop packaging absolutely everything in Plastic which causes the oceans to clog up with plastic waste?Replace old fossil fueled power plants?Slap massive import duty on products from countries who are major polluters to pay for the damage their total lack of regard for the rest of the planet causes?Buy more electric cars and put some effort into making them affordable?Expand Economic Exclusion Zones, set up an international naval task-force and crack down on pirate fishing fleets?Try to situate food production facilities as close to the consumer as possible to cut down on carbon emissions?Promote energy efficiency?Provide incentives for people to upgrade old buildings to reduce their energy consumption?Try to plan cities and infrastructure to create continuous habitat for wildlife and modify existing infrastructure similarly?Stop listing to ignorant and corrupt politicians who label common sense stuff like this as communism?

That's the sound of you missing the point. TFS goes into great detail about facts of whats happened, then says "which makes the point" - but it never MAKES the point. It's just a groupthink argument that everyone must somehow naturally arrive at the same conclusion.

I would think that to be a better use of wood scraps, as opposed to the good heartwood typically used for lumber production.

Of course, if we are using less actual timber and more manufactured wood products in home construction, I sure can't tell from visiting my local Lowe's or Home Depot - they still carry just as many pieces of 2x4 timber as they always have.

As someone who does carpentry and has helped build a couple houses over the past few years, this is patently false. You've been lied to by whatever environmentalist rag you subscribe to.

Most homes in the US are framed out of 2x4's cut from pine, floorboards are made of pine plywood, hardwood oak, cherry, and others are used for flooring. All of this comes from the timber industry, mostly from Canadian timber, but some more exotic stuff still comes from Brazil and Africa. My brother's floor is Brazilian cherry.

Some of that lumber is sourced from tree farms, but those tree farms are problematic as well - it takes years to grow them, and habitats establish themselves within those farms as they grow. The longer it takes to grow them, the longer it takes to offset losses in virgin forest. Hardwoods typically take over 30 years to be ready for harvest, longer if you want wider wood as you would need for 2x6 or 2x8 joists and furniture.

The Chestnut was wiped out due to a fungal plague. Ash and Elm species are currently being devastated by the Ash Borer and Dutch Elm Disease, respectively. Walnut is being killed off by Thousand Cankers disease. I'm waiting for Oak and Maple to be wiped out due to some other exotic pest - perhaps Oak Wilt or some such.

i've looked at new construction and every new house i see, the frame is built from CLT, not you 2x4's. of course this is national builders, not your local contractor who knows how to build a whole house.

As someone who studied forestry at the agricultural university in the Netherlands (yes, there is forest in the Netherlands...) I claim there is no need to forego on wood as a construction material. The only thing that needs to go is the clearcut method of forestry with its accompanying monoculture and age-based rotation. Something like the German 'Dauerwald' (http://forestry.oxfordjournals.org/content/70/4/375.full.pdf [oxfordjournals.org]) can be used instead. These forestry methods don't destroy the habitat while still giving

Who says that the authors are trying to make a point, versus simply drawing conclusions based on observations? The derision in this thread and dismissal of the (ludicrous!) idea that any change in modern society's behaviors may be a good idea strike me as a defensive lashing-out by people who don't take climate change seriously and won't modify their behavior, humanity be damned.

While I agree that the change we witness in the climate is most likely to be blamed on industrialization, I think it's overzealous to instantly draw conclusions as to what exactly this change will do on the planet. And ecologists are the people we should blame for that. They've been claiming for decades that if we don't do anything the sea will rise by 25m in two decades.... But it's been two decades already and nothing visible has happened. In the eyes of many, they've lost most of their credibility. Espec

They've been claiming for decades that if we don't do anything the sea will rise by 25m in two decades

You may want to check your sources. Likely you are being lied to, but not by scientists. More likely you've been reading denier blogs. Here is what the IPCC predicted 25 years ago: "For the 'Business-as-Usual' scenario at year 2030 global-mean sea level is 8-29cm higher than today with a best estimate of 18cm." - https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreport... [www.ipcc.ch]

Since 1990 we've already had about 8cm of sea level rise so we have already already within the projected range and we still have 15 years to go. The rate of rise is accelerating. Even at the current rate we will see about 13 cm rise by 2030. More if acceleration continues. Not far off from the predictions of 1990. - http://climate.nasa.gov/key_in... [nasa.gov]

You are off by a few orders of magnitude whereas the scientists have already been proven correct.

The greatest irony of all is that those with children are usually the ones screaming the loudest that nothing is wrong and we shouldn't have to change our behaviors or even slightly take responsibility for the destruction of the ecosystem that allows us, the Human Race, to live and flourish on this planet. [wikipedia.org]

I imagine it's closer to "Invasive species are a danger to the entire ecosystem, including, eventually, themselves." When dealing with such the usual solutions are extermination (generally ineffective), or introducing a predator capable of keeping them in check without further destabilizing the ecosystem. Assuming we wish to do neither, nor suffer global ecosystem collapse, it would behoove us to start learning to co-exist with our ecosystem rather than strip-mining it.

And it's not like that is some sort of knee-jerk hippie "let's all live in mud huts" bullshit. As one example consider the gradually increasing numbers of oceanic "wildlife preserves" where all fishing and other destructive exploitation is banned - Not only does the protected area begin returning to pre-exploitation lushness, but so do the surrounding waters. Fishing yields around the protected zone reverse the global trend and begin to increase dramatically, greatly benefiting even the fishermen who were initially opposed to banning fishing in the richest waters. Given half a chance nature can be extremely bountiful, we just need to give the ecosystems a chance to stay healthy rather than maximizing short-term profits at the expense of long-term desertification.

People who lived in mud huts or worse were responsible for most of the megafauna extinctions, not technology. Humans who can't see or don't consider the consequences of their actions are destructive with or without advanced tech.

I'm not convinced people in mud huts were numerous enough or destructive enough to manage the megafauna extinctions. A lot of this hysterical screaming about how we're destroying the planet seems a lot like hubris.

On certain level, the idea that we have that much power pleases the egos of some people.

Well, if you look at Africa, which probably has the largest population living in rough conditions, and there's a lot of habitat destruction for firewood for cooking fires and generally any animal that can be caught goes into the pot. Sure, there's poaching for precious material like ivory, but there's also poaching simply to not starve.

This is something to consider with the widespread ranching of cattle- we want our meat, so it's either a matter of raising it ourselves with a few sets of monolithic spec

I'm not convinced people in mud huts were numerous enough or destructive enough to manage the megafauna extinctions. A lot of this hysterical screaming about how we're destroying the planet seems a lot like hubris.

On certain level, the idea that we have that much power pleases the egos of some people.

The preponderant majority of land mammals in the world, by weight, are either humans or food for humans. For vegetation, the picture is not much more encouraging: all of the world's wild forests weight less and cover way less land than our agriculture does.

There was a whole special report in the economist about the idea that we are now in a different, man-made geological era, the "anthropocene": http://www.economist.com/node/... [economist.com]

In historic times humans hunted e.g. for horses.They drove them over cliffs with fire and shouting and hunting.A band of perhaps 40 adults, 20 or 25 of them male/hunters drove 100ds of horses, a whole herd over a cliff...Because panicked horses follow the ones in front of them.How many of those 100 horses did they eat? 1? 2?... 4?

Europe is full with stone age slaughterhouses where Horses, Mamoth or what ever kind of huntable animal you want to name where killed in absurd numbers.

I saw a documentory about a certain place somewhere in modern Poland where humans met (many tribes, like a jambouree) over a period of roughly 40,000 years, likely each year in local 'summer'. There is a site where the layer of bones of hunted animals, eaten, not only killed somewhere, only those they actually butchered and ate, the layer is over ten meter thick.

The layer is over ten meter thick after 15,000 years of decomposting. And that is only the junk yard of the bones of the animals that actually got butchered and eaten.

This is incorrect. Some primitive people do live in balance with their environments, but that is only because the environment has become adapted to them over a long period of time. The environment that was there before their ancestors arrived was different, and possibly included a variety of megafauna that was hunted or pressured into extinction before the current "balance" was established. Primitive people often burn large areas of vegetation, and kill large predators that they perceive as threats or compe

People without Refrigeration or Jerky-ing technology don't really finish the megafauna they hunt.You've gotten less that half-way through your last mammoth before it's no longer safe to eat, so now you gotta kill another.

Identifying the drivers of these extinctions is straightforward, but stemming the loss is a daunting challenge. Animal species continue to decline in, and disappear from, even large, long-protected reserves, due both to direct impacts, such as poaching, and indirect ecological feedbacks, such as habitat fragmentation. Though hunting and poaching might seem obvious candidates for targeted policy and management interventions, there are complex social issues underlying these activities that will require coordinated and cooperative actions by nations (see Brashares et al., p. 376).

While stemming this loss remains a challenging goal, attempts to reverse the extinction trend are increasing. Such “refaunation” efforts involve a variety of approaches, including breeding animals in captivity, with the hope of reintroducing them to the wild, and assisting recolonization of areas where species have become locally extinct (see Seddon et al., p. 406). Active reversal of animal extinctions is proving just as challenging as preventing extinctions in the first place, but a few success stories provide some hope. Many note and mourn the loss of animals but have not recognized that the impacts of this loss go beyond an aesthetic and emotional need to maintain animals as a part of nature. Current research reveals startling rates of animal declines and extinctions and confirms the importance of these species to ecosystems (see Stokstad, p. 396). Further, and more broadly, it suggests that if we are unable to end or reverse the rate of their loss, it will mean more for our own future than a broken heart or an empty forest.

You most certainly can, and satellite and everything. I remember the old days, when we had to go out and crank the old four meter C band dish that was standing on the only piece of concrete on the whole property by hand to find another bird.

your'e comment reminds me of an experience when i was a freshman in high school taking shop class. A friend on the schoolbus asked to see the boxcutter we had to bring in for class (im guessing they dont allow that in high schools anymore these days). anyway, when i took it out and commented on how sharp it was, the idiot next to us, trying to look for someone to make fun of said 'aww.. thats bullshit! its not sharp at all!' and proceeded to pull it out of my hand, and swipe it against his arm. after about a second, blood began the gush, and his expression changed to an 'OH.'

interesting way to look at it. makes sense and explains a lot - to borrow from your example then (and use some broad brush strokes), on widely impactful issues, only 3 of 5 have the perceptual tools to make an informed decision. Of these three, if 2/3 have not only the intellectual capacity, but also the moral compass to act in a responsible and wholistic way, then that leaves us with 1 guy... who has the intellect but lacks the moral compass.... who then proceeds to manipulate the 2 sub-95'ers with propoga